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HOSEA  BALLOU 


AND 


THE   GOSPEL  RENAISSANCE   OF 
THE  NINETEENTH   CENTURT 


BY 

REV.  JOHN   COLEMAN  ADAMS,  D.D. 


^   OF  THE 

UNiVER 


UNIVERSALIST   PUBLISHING    HOUSE 

BOSTON   AND    CHICAGO 

1903 


3J/S 


Stanbope  ipress 

p.   H.  GILSON   COMPANY 
BOSTON,    U.S.A. 


WITH    COMPLIMENTS    OF 

UXIVEKSALIST  PUBLISHING  HOUSE 

EuGEJfi;  F.  E^'uicoTT,  GENEJiAr,  Agext 

I30STOX  AND  GHJGAGO 


i1\^^ 


HOSEA    BALLOU 

AND 

THE    GOSPEL    RENAISSANCE   OF   THE 
NINETEENTH    CENTURY 

Delivered  before  the  Universalist  General  Convention  at  Buffalo^  N.  K, 
Sunday,  October  20j  igoi. 

By  rev.  JOHN    COLEMAN   ADAMS,  D.D. 


"  The  stone  which  the  builders  refiised  is  become  the  headstone  of 
the  corner."  — Ps.  1 18  :  22. 

We  are  met  for  the  first  session  of  this  Conven- 
tion in  a  new  century.  It  has  seemed  to  me  that 
no  theme  could  better  fit  the  time  and  occasion  than 
one  which  should  send  our  minds  back  over  the 
century  just  closed,  to  trace  the  relations  of  our 
Church  to  the  development  of  religious  thought  in 
America  during  that  period. 

It  is  a  fact  not  always  noted  that  geography  has 
an  important  bearing  upon  the  evolution  of  re- 
ligious ideas.  The  same  process  of  enlightenment 
and  growth  may  go  on  simultaneously  in  various 
parts  of  the  woi:ld.  The  same  problems  may  be 
worked  out  in  very  different  and  quite  independent 
ways  in  different  lands.  The  progress  of  the  Spirit 
in  America  during  the  nineteenth  century  is  a  case 
in  point.    The  liberal  movement  in  Christianity  has 

3 


1  n^  17;^ 


HOSEA   BALLOU 

gone  on  here  in  ways  peculiar  to  the  land  and  its 
own  religious  life.  The  Broad  Churchmen  of  Eng- 
land and  America  stand  to-day  upon  practically  the 
same  great  affirmations.  But  the  process  by  which 
we  have  come  into  our  convictions  in  America  is 
quite  independent  of  that  which  has  prepared  the 
way  for  our  brethren  across  seas.  We  had  our  own 
conditions  to  start  with,  our  own  leaders,  our  own 
great  campaigns.  The  Universalist  Church  has  had 
a  most  important  function  in  the  great  movement 
which  has  gone  on  over  the  world,  as  a  revival  of 
the  primitive  Gospel  of  Jesus.  To  appreciate  this 
work  calls  for  a  review  of  our  religious  progress  for 
a  full  century. 

To  go  back  a  hundred  years  in  America's  re- 
ligious life  is  to  sink  pretty  much  all  the  names 
which  are  the  great  spiritual  landmarks  for  the  men 
and  women  of  to-day.  The  theologians  may  fix 
their  eyes  on  the  compass  and  the  stars,  but  the 
people  pick  their  path  by  the  waymarks  of  great 
lives.  And  they  march  and  climb  to-day  with  their 
eyes  on  the  mighty  names  of  the  last  hundred  years. 
Retracing  the  years  of  that  century,  think  what  we 
lose  !  Brooks  and  Beecher  and  Bushnell  sink  be- 
low the  horizon ;  Theodore  Parker  disappears,  and 
the  Wares  and  William  Ellery  Channing.  Every 
Unitarian  church  vanishes,  and  most  of  the  churches 
of  our  own  name.  We  lose  the  books  we  have  read 
the  most — Bushnell's  "Vicarious  Sacrifice"  and 
Farrar's  "  Eternal  Hope  "  and  Fiske's  "  Destiny  of 
Man,"  with  such  epoch-making  poems  as  "  The 
Eternal  Goodness"  and  "In  Memoriam,"  and  such 
yeasty  writings  as  Emerson's  "  Essays"  and  Parker's 
"  Discourses  on  Religion."     We  find  ourselves  in 


THE   GOSPEL   RENAISSANCE 

a  time  of  theological  gloom  and  religious  pessimism, 
untempered  by  the  liberal  faith  and  good  cheer. 
Methodism  offered  the  only  assuagement  of  Cal- 
vinism which  the  people  could  accept,  and  all  the 
mitigation  it  could  present  was  to  affirm  that  if  the 
human  race  was  totally  wrecked,  the  fault  was  not 
God's,  but  man's.  Small  consolation  that,  to  those 
adrift  and  sinking  with  the  hulk  !  The  thought  of 
God  brought  up  the  idea  of  a  stern  and  vengeful 
being.  Jesus  was  the  peacemaker,  pleading  with  an 
angered  monarch.  Human  nature  was  the  syno- 
nym for  all  depravities.  Life  meant  a  probation, 
with  the  chances  all  against  the  soul.  Salvation  was 
an  insurance  arrangement  which  guaranteed  a  future 
heaven.  Parents  mourned  for  little  babes  in  hell. 
Men  dared  not  mourn  at  all  for  their  other  unre- 
generate  dead.  John  Murray,  indeed,  was  abroad 
in  the  land.  But  few  men  dared  give  audience  to 
the  strange  faith  he  proclaimed.  And  even  he  him- 
self did  not  comprehend  the  mighty  work  which 
was  to  be  done,  nor  was  he  equal  to  the  mighty 
thoughts  which  were  to  bring  in  the  new  era.  His 
theology  was  hardly  more  than  a  sterilized  Calvin- 
ism —  an  attempt  to  purge  the  popular  teaching  of 
the  germs  of  infidelity  and  despair.  It  was  a 
prophecy  of  the  great  religious  break-up,  as  the 
bluebird  is  the  prophet  of  the  spring.  The  last 
third  of  the  eighteenth  century  in  America  was  a 
very  winter  of  religious  thought.  The  streams  of 
a  true  spiritual  apprehension  were  frozen.  The 
world  lay  cold  and  hard  under  the  icy  breath  of 
Calvinism.  The  seeds  of  generous  sentiment  were 
locked  in  the  soil.  But  the  beginning  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  was  a  theological  month  of  March. 

5 


HOSEA   BALLOU 

The  air  began  to  change,  a  milder  spirit  breathed 
over  men's  thoughts.  A  new  element  was  warring 
with  the  frigid  dogmas  of  the  stern  old  creed.  And 
like  all  the  new  elements  in  man's  moral  life,  this 
was  incarnated  in  a  human  soul.  It  was  the  out-put 
of  a  human  life.  That  life  was  lived  by  Hosea 
Ballou. 

In  1 77 1,  ten  years  before  Channing's  birth,  thir- 
teen years  after  Edwards  had  died,  there  was  born 
in  a  little  hamlet  of  New  Hampshire  a  man  who 
was  to  be  the  equal,  in  his  thought  and  his  work, 
of  both  Channing  and  Edwards.  When  the  Cal- 
vinism of  which  Edwards  was  the  type  and  the 
exponent  was  almost  absolute  in  America,  this  man 
thought  out  the  system  which  was  to  displace  Cal- 
vinism as  the  religion  of  the  masses.  It  was  he  and 
not  John  Murray  who  gave  to  Universalism  the 
solid  basis  which  saved  it  from  the  destruction  which 
awaited  the  premises  on  which  Murray  and  Relly 
had  rested  it.  It  was  he,  and  not  Channing,  who 
first  gave  form  and  force  to  the  truths  about  the 
Unity  and  the  Fatherhood  of  God,  which  have 
steadily  crowded  all  less  worthy  doctrines  out  of 
men's  minds.  He  preached  the  central  truth  which 
inspired  the  Unitarian  schism,  eight  years  before 
Channing's  settlement  in  Boston,  and  twenty  years 
before  the  outbreak  of  the  great  controversy  in  the 
Congregational  churches.  In  1805  he  gave  to  the 
world  the  "  Treatise  on  Atonement,"  the  first 
American  book  to  outline  and  to  urge  the  Broad 
Church  theology,  producing  a  religious  classic  which 
condensed  in  its  scant  pages  the  essence  of  the  ideas 
which  were  to  dominate  the  thinking  of  a  hundred 
years. 

6 


THE   GOSPEL   RENAISSANCE 

If  we  should  honor  the  man  who  first  announces 
a  great  system  of  truth ;  or  him  who  frames  it  by 
his  own  unaided  thought ;  or  him  who  compels  the 
world  to  pause  and  answer  its  searching  questions ; 
surely  Hosea  Ballou  deserves  triple  honors  from  all 
fair-minded  students  of  American  religious  thought. 
If  we  draw  a  drag-net  over  all  this  land  to  bring  in 
those  who  have  inclined  a  little,  or  contributed  much 
to  this  faith,  why  should  he  be  ignored  who  stands 
out  as  the  pioneer  in  time  and  in  logic  —  the  man 
who  first  thought  and  first  taught  the  essentials  of 
the  New  Theology  ?  For  his  spiritual  achievement 
as  well  as  for  his  missionary  work,  Hosea  Ballou 
takes  a  foremost  place  among  the  religious  leaders 
of  our  land. 

He  was  of  the  humblest  origin  ;  and  poverty,  toil 
and  scant  resources  were  his  portion  from  childhood. 
He  had  no  schooling  till  he  was  nineteen,  and  then 
but  for  a  few  months.  But  out  of  a  native  intellect- 
ual strength,  a  homely  genius,  and  profound  spirit- 
ual insight,  he  found  means  to  attain  the  highest 
conceptions  of  God  and  of  Christianity  which  the 
world  has  yet  reached.  He  was  a  man  after  the 
fashion  of  Abraham  Lincoln.  The  same  common- 
sense,  calm  judgment,  native  reasonableness,  the 
same  clear  moral  perceptions  and  loving  kindness 
which  marked  Lincoln's  soul  were  Hosea  Bailouts. 
As  Lincoln,  too,  appealed  to  the  common  people, 
and  carried  them  with  him,  so  Ballou  was  one  whom 
they  heard  gladly  and  suffered  to  persuade  them. 
If  any  man  shall  take  the  pains  to  read  the  speeches 
of  Abraham  Lincoln  and  then  to  study  the  sermons 
and  writings  of  Hosea  Ballou,  he  cannot  fail  to  be 
impressed    and    moved    by    the    similarity  of  their 

7 


HOSEA   BALLOU 

'spiritj  the  likeness  in  their  tone,  the  simple  dignity, 
the  homely  strength,  the  fresh  and  human  spontane- 
ity they  both  exhibit. 

Early  in  life  Hosea  Ballou  began  his  contention 
with  the  popular  theology.  Remember  what  that 
theology  was  ;  recall  the  five  points  of  Calvinism  — 
if  you  can  !  Predestination,  Particular  Redemption, 
Total  Depravity,  Effectual  Calling,  Final  Persever- 
ance. Recall  the  dogmas  to  which  these  were  super- 
added, as  to  a  common  foundation  —  the  Trinity, 
the  Vicarious  Atonement  and  Everlasting  Hell.  It 
was  a  frightful  nightmare  of  horrible  teachings.  It 
affirmed  God,  and  then  described  Him  in  terms 
which  made  him  a  Devil.  It  talked  of  Divine  Jus- 
tice and  meant  superhuman  Cruelty.  It  proclaimed 
as  "  Good  News  "  the  tidings  that  the  greater  por- 
tion of  mankind  are  hopelessly  lost.  It  grounded 
the  universe  in  wrath  and  clouded  the  glory  of 
heaven  with  the  inextinguishable  smoke  of  hell. 
Against  all  this  system  Ballou's  soul  rose  in  revolt. 
Before  he  was  thirty  years  of  age,  he  had  thought 
and  prayed  his  way  out  of  it  all.  He  rejected  the 
idea  that  some  are  elected  to  be  saved,  but  the 
majority  to  be  damned ;  that  God  hates  the  sinful 
world;  that  Jesus'  death  appeases  His  anger;  that 
humanity  is  wholly  depraved ;  that  retribution  is  to 
be  inflicted  forever  in  hell ;  that  Jesus  and  the  Holy 
Spirit  are  coequal  with  the  Father  in  the  mysterious 
person  called  the  Trinity,  and  that  man  must  be 
miraculously  changed  in  all  his  nature  before  he  can 
be  acceptable  in  God's  sight. 

His  own  teaching  started  from  the  basis  of  God's 
unchanging  love  to  man ;  of  His  eternal  Father- 
hood ;  of  man's  sonship  to  God  ;  of  Jesus'  work  as 

8 


THE    GOSPEL   RENAISSANCE 

the  reconciler  of  man  to  God ;  of  the  certainty  of 
retribution,  and  of  man's  final  salvation.  He  for- 
mulated, a  hundred  years  ago,  the  doctrine  that  love, 
not  wrath,  is  the  center  of  the  Gospel  message.  He 
proclaimed  the  grand  truth  of  the  universal  Father- 
hood of  God,  the  universal  brotherhood  of  man,  the 
atonement  as  a  sign  of  God's  love  seeking  to  over- 
come man's  estrangement,  the  natural  character  of 
penalty,  the  educating  purpose  of  life,  and  all  ex- 
perience and  discipline  as  God's  open  road  to  glory 
and  to  grace.  His  method  was  dignified  and  noble. 
His  spirit  was  Christian.  His  practical  teaching 
was  wise  and  effective.  He  went  to  the  people. 
He  traversed  New  England  and  New  York,  preach- 
ing wherever  a  hearing  could  be  had.  He  argued 
like  Socrates.  He  pleaded  like  Paul.  He  was  as 
serene  as  the  firmament.  But  like  the  firmament 
his  soul  could  open  in  flashes  of  electric  wrath 
against  cruel  error  and  unbeHef  in  the  goodness  of 
God.  His  shrewd  humor  played  through  all  his 
discourse,  never  getting  the  better  of  his  dignity, 
always  apposite  and  pointed  and  effective.  He  was 
one  of  the  greatest  popular  preachers  in  America. 
Had  he  been  the  apostle  of  a  popular  creed  instead 
of  the  bold  and  uncompromising  assailant  of  all  the 
theological  capital  in  which  the  churches  had  invested 
their  faith,  he  would  have  had  a  following  second  to 
no  great  orator  in  our  pulpit.  Wherever  he  went, 
he  commanded  a  hearing.  Men  listened  to  him. 
The  common  people  heard  him  gladly.  While  the 
voice  of  Channing  and  the  Unitarian  scholars  went 
out  to  the  cultured  and  the  intellectual  class,  Ballou 
was  talking  to  the  common  people.  He  was  sow-  ^ 
ing  the  seed  where  it  always  germinates  best  for'  the  f' 

9 


HOSEA   BALLOU 

i  harvest  of  a  reform  in  religious  and  moral  ideas,  — 
I  in  the  hearts  of  the  masses.  And  when  his  work 
-was  done,  a  new  era  had  opened  in  American  life. 
He  had  not  only  given  form  and  consistency  to  the 
theology  of  the  Universalist  Church,  he  had  put 
ideas  into  the  hearts  of  the  common  people  of  New 
England,  which  are  to-day  just  springing  up  in  the 
fresh  green  of  the  blade  out  of  the  furrow. 

It  is  important  to  remember  that  in  this  great  in- 
tellectual and  spiritual  work  Ballou  was  an  original 
student,  pondering,  without  teachers,  or  philosoph- 
ical preconceptions,  or  religious  partisanship,  the 
message  of  Jesus.  His  is  the  first-hand  study  of  a 
simple,  straightforward,  godly  mind.  Men  who  are 
suspicious  of  modern  interpretations  which  lead  to 
Universalism  and  think  that  they  are  the  confusions 
of  philosophy  obscuring  the  Gospel,  should  re- 
member that  this  man  studied  no  systems,  and  had 
no  theories  to  force  into  the  Bible.  He  was  trying 
to  frame  a  theology  out  of  the  Bible,  not  to  distort 
the  Bible  to  fit  a  theology.  "  I  never  read  anything 
on  the  doctrine  of  Universal  Salvation  before  I  be- 
lieved It,  the  Bible  excepted ;  nor  did  I  know,  that  I 
now  recollect,  that  there  was  anything  published  in 
its  vindication  in  the  world."  This  is  his  own  testi- 
mony. He  was  a  "  Bible-man  "  from  his  youth  up. 
Dwight  Moody  himself  was  not  more  thoroughly 
a  man  of  one  book.  That  he  found  the  faith  he 
did,  under  such  conditions,  at  least  frees  it  from  the 
suspicion  of  being  a  mere  philosophical  theory ! 

It  is  a  delicate  thing  to  undertake  to  estimate  the 
real  part  that  any  man  has  played  In  the  changing  of 
men's  thoughts  and  the  correction  of  their  errors. 
And   it    may    be  questioned   whether   we   are  not 

lO 


THE    GOSPEL   RENAISSANCE 

assigning  too  large  a  force  to  the  voice  and  the  brain 
of  Hosea  Ballou.  If  any  man  challenges  the  judg- 
ment, he  must  deal  with  the  facts.  The  change  of 
theological  thought  within  the  first  half  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  is  beyond  dispute.  So  is  the  activity 
of  Hosea  Ballou  in  the  spread  of  those  truths  which 
he  formulated  and  defended.  We  know  that  his 
preaching  and  his  writing  were  a  positive  force  in 
the  Universalist  Church.  His  theology  speedily 
took  the  place  of  Murray's  and  he  led  his  brother 
ministers  forth  to  an  aggressive  and  unflinching  war- 
fare. They  went  to  the  people.  They  rallied  themi 
in  hallsj  in  school-houses,  in  private  homes.  They 
traversed  the  land  from  Maine  to  Ohio.  They  wrote 
books  and  they  published  newspapers.  They  ar- 
gued, they  persuaded,  they  appealed.  And  when 
they  had  wrought  for  half  a  century  they  had  won 
a  great  victory.  Their  influence  had  been  far  wider 
than  the  area  they  themselves  had  covered.  The 
reformer  is  always  more  influential  than  his  im- 
mediate following  would  indicate.  He  gets  wide 
notice  and  much  help  from  unintending  co-workers. 
His  opponents  help  to  spread  his  doctrines,  and 
those  who  come  to  check  remain  to  disseminate  his 
views.  The  influence  of  Strauss  in  compelling  a 
new  study  of  the  Bible  was  out  of  all  proportion  to 
the  sale  and  reading  of  his  "  Life  of  Jesus."  More 
men  heard  of  evolution  from  those  who  opposed  its 
doctrines  than  ever  read  Spencer  or  Darwin.  So 
Ballou  and  his  disciples  spread  their  gospel  through 
those  who  withstood  and  denounced  it.  The  people 
caught  the  message  from  lips  which  only  opened  to 
condemn  it.  Like  the  seeds  of  wayside  flowers, 
which  fasten  themselves  upon  wayfaring  birds  and 

II 


HOSEA   BALLOU 

beasts  and  human  beings,  so  the  word  was  caught 
up  by  the  casual  or  the  unfriendly  hearer,  and  passed 
on  to  fruitful  soil. 

Remember  once  again  that  before  Channing's 
silver  voice  had  attuned  itself  to  the  great  truths  it 
was  to  declare,  Ballou  was  preaching  all  that 
Channing  ever  preached,  and  more,  of  the  Unity 
and  Fatherhood  of  God ;  of  the  Divinity  and 
Dignity  of  Human  Nature  ;  of  Salvation  by  and 
through  Character.  A  generation  before  Horace 
Bushnell  was  ordained,  he  was  standing  upon  Bush- 
nell's  doctrine  of  atonement.  Seventy  years  before 
Beecher  was  storming  the  hearts  of  Plymouth 
church  with  his  denunciations  of  the  devilishness  of 
Calvin's  God,  he  had  said  all  that  Beecher  said,  in 
a  half  dozen  lines  of  the  "Atonement."  And  he 
added  to  the  cardinal  points  of  the  "new  theology'* 
what  no  one  of  these,  not  even  Channing  himself, 
had  come  to  see  was  the  necessary  conclusion  of 
their  own  premises,  the  final  harmony  of  all  souls 
with  God.  There  is  not  a  single  point  of  the  later 
thought,  except  its  view  of  the  Scriptures,  which 
Ballou  does  not  anticipate  in  the  "  Treatise  on 
Atonement."  There  is  not  a  prophet  of  the  new 
faith  whose  voice  rings  out  with  his  in  that  early 
dawn  of  the  new  thought. 

Lest  it  be  suspected  that  I  am  yielding  to  the 
enthusiasm  of  the  partisan  and  the  advocate,  I  must 
cite  to  you  the  testimonies  which  confirm  my  state- 
ments. Out  of  the  pages  of  the  "  Treatise,"  let  me 
bring  certain  representative  utterances  which,  though 
brief,  shall,  I  promise  you,  be  decisive  of  the  views 
of  this  forerunner  of  our  latter  day  thought. 

First,    listen    to    his    simple    but    unmistakable 

12 


THE    GOSPEL   RENAISSANCE 

enunciation  of  the  doctrine  of  God's  Love  and 
Fatherhood.  Remember  into  what  a  darkened 
Christendom  he  spoke  it.  Recall  those  "  Five 
Points  of  Calvinism."  Then  hear  him.  He  has 
been  insisting  upon  the  truth  that  it  is  not  God  who 
needs  to  be  reconciled  to  man,  but  man  who  needs 
to  be  reconciled  to  God.  "  Here,"  he  says,  "  we 
shun  those  difficulties  which  have  represented  the 
Gospel  of  Christ  so  inconsistent.  We  now  view  the 
Almighty,  the  same  yesterday,  to-day  and  forever ; 
by  no  means  changed  in  his  disposition  toward  his 
children,  but  always  designing  and  working  all  things 
for  their  good.  There  is  no  need  of  the  self- 
contradictory  notion  of  altering  an  unalterable  being ; 
of  satisfying  an  infinite  dissatisfaction  ;  of  reconciling 
a  being  who  was  never  unreconciled ;  of  producing 
love  in  love  itself;  of  causing  an  eternal  unchangeable 
friend  to  be  friendly,  or  of  offering  a  sacrifice  to  the 
eternal  Father  of  our  spirits,  to  cause  him  to  love 
and  to  have  mercy  on  his  offspring"  (p.  io8). 
"(God)  comprehends  the  whole  futurition  of  all  moral 
beings  and  loves  them  as  his  own  offspring,  with  a 
love  consistent  with  his  own  immutable  existence." 
(p.  1 02.)  There  is  the  four-square  granitic  statement 
of  the  Fatherhood,  the  universal  Fatherhood  of  God, 
as  neither  uttered  nor  believed  in  those  dark  days. 
Second,  hear  his  explicit  affirmation  of  man's 
divine  descent  and  heavenly  nature.  We  have 
heard  him  call  men  the  offspring  of  God.  He 
means  it  in  no  narrow  or  partial  sense.  "  Man  is 
of  heavenly  extraction,  is  in  his  nature  allied  to  the 
heavenly  state  in  which  he  was  created  before  he 
was  formed  of  the  dust  of  the  earth."  "  Were 
the    earth    with  all  her   vines  and  fruits    my   own 

13 


ROSEA   BALLOU 

this  moment,  on  condition  that  I  should  give  up 
the  riches  which  I  see  in  this  heavenly  relation,  my 
bargain  would  make  me  poor."  (2d  Ed.  p.  32.)  He 
shows  a  prophetic  grasp  of  the  great  consequences 
involved  in  this  truth,  which  we  of  to-day  name 
"the  solidarity  of  the  race,"  when  he  says  (p.  190), 
"  I  do  not  conceive  that  one  part  of  humanity  can 
be  made  perfectly  happy  while  the  rest  is  in  misery. 
When  Paul  spoke  of  those  who  died  in  faith  not 
having  received  the  promise,  he  says,  '  God  having 
provided  some  better  things  for  us,  that  they  without 
us  could  not  be  made  perfect.'  " 

He  had  fully  grasped  and  decisively  declared  the 
doctrine  of  salvation  by  character :  "  To  believe  in 
any  other  atonement  than  the  putting  off  of  the  old 
man,  with  his  deeds,  and  the  putting  on  of  the  new 
man,  which  after  God  is  created  in  righteousness 
and  true  holiness,  is  carnal-mindedness  and  is 
death."  (p.  123.)  "The  salvation  which  God 
wills  is  a  salvation  from  sin.  Then  as  much  as 
you  desire  salvation,  you  will  wish  to  avoid  sin  and 
wickedness."  "  No  man  understandingly  wants  sal- 
vation any  further  than  he  wants  more  holiness." 
(p.  233.)  "As  atonement  is  a  complete  fulfilment 
of  the  law  of  the  heavenly  man,  it  causes  its  recipi- 
ent to  love  God  and  his  fellow-creatures  in  as  great 
a  degree  as  he  partakes  of  its  nature."     (p.  132.) 

His  doctrine  of  atonement  is  a  complete  reversal 
of  all  the  Orthodox  teachings  for  fifteen  hundred 
years.  No  wonder  that  the  theologians  gnashed  on 
him  with  their  teeth.  If  they  raged  over  Horace 
Bushnell  fifty  years  later,  who  still  clung  to  the 
main  lines  of  Orthodoxy,  why  should  they  not  con- 
demn this  man  whose  whole  scheme  collided  with 

14 


THE   GOSPEL   RENAISSANCE 

their  own  ?  He  puts  the  significance  of  the  work 
of  Jesus  Christ  entirely  in  its  effect  upon  man.  It 
is  man  who  needs  atonement  with  his  Father,  not 
his  Father  who  needs  to  be  reconciled  to  man.  "  It 
is  evident  that  God  is  not  the  unreconciled,  and 
does  not  require  an  atonement  to  reconcile  him  to 
his  creatures.  Let  us  now  turn  on  the  other  side 
and  see  if  man  be  not  unreconciled  to  God ;  and  if 
it  would  not  be  more  reasonable  to  reconcile  man 
to  his  Maker  than  to  reconcile  God  to  the  sinner." 
(p.  T02.)  "  Let  it  be  understood  that  it  is  man  who 
receives  the  atonement,  who  stands  in  need  of  recon- 
ciliation, who  being  dissatisfied,  needs  satisfaction ; 
and  not  place  these  imperfections  and  wants  on 
Him  who  is  infinite  in  his  fulness ;  and  the  doc- 
trine of  atonement  may  be  sought  for  in  the  nature 
of  things  and  found  rational  to  the  understanding." 
(p.  107.)  That  is  the  kernel  of  his  whole  doctrine. 
It  is  Bushnell's  to  the  letter.  It  is  the  doctrine  of 
the  new,  the  modified  Orthodoxy.  Channing  was 
still  saying  in  1 8 1 5,  "  Liberal  Christians  and  Ortho- 
dox both  agree  that  Jesus  Christ,  by  his  sufferings 
and  intercessions,  obtains  forgiveness  for  sinful 
men."  "  On  the  question,  '  how,'  they  think  the 
Scripture  has  given  little  light."  Long  before  the 
Unitarians  had  made  up  their  minds  on  this  vital 
point,  Ballou  had  declared  himself  with  a  clearness 
which  cannot  be  mistaken,  and  had  fully  assumed 
the  modern  position. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  as  it  was  held  in  his 
day,  he  openly  repudiated.  He  was  frankly  and 
squarely  LJnitarian  in  his  doctrine  about  God.  In 
answer  to  a  hypothetical  question  whether  he  would 
consider  the  Mediator  no  more  than  equal  with  men, 

15 


ROSEA   BALLOU 

he  answers,  "  Yes,  were  it  not  that  our  Father  and 
his  Father,  and  our  God  and  his  God,  hath  anointed 
him  above  his  fellows."  "  The  oneness  of  the 
Father  and  Son  is  their  union  and  agreement  in  the 
great  work  which  he  has  undertaken."  (p.  113.)  He 
marshals  the  common-sense  arguments  against  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity  in  no  uncertain  fashion:  "If 
Jesus  Christ  were  really  God,  it  must  be  argued  that 
God  really  died.  Again,  if  the  Godhead  consists  of 
three  distinct  persons,  and  each  of  these  persons  be 
infinite,  the  whole  Godhead  amounts  to  the  amazing 
sum  of  infinity  multiplied  by  three  !  If  it  is  said 
neither  of  these  persons  alone  is  infinite,  I  say  the 
three  together,  with  the  addition  of  a  million  more 
such  would  not  make  an  infinite  Being."     (p.  92.) 

A  good  many  people  still  live  who  remember  the 
famous  Sunday  in  the  eighties  when  Henry  Ward 
Beecher  startled  even  Plymouth  Church  by  his  fierce 
denunciations  of  that  idea  of  God  which  represents 
Him  as  having  created  millions  of  souls  only  to 
damn  them.  It  was  counted  a  brave  utterance,  and 
it  made  the  whole  country  quake.  He  declared  the 
effect  of  the  dogma  of  reprobation  to  be  "  to  trans- 
form the  Almighty  into  a  monster  more  hideous 
than  Satan ;  and  I  swear  by  all  that  is  sacred  that  I 
will  never  worship  Satan,  though  he  should  appear 
dressed  in  royal  robes  and  sitting  on  the  throne  of 
Jehovah."  Eighty  years  before,  Ballou  had  put  the 
same  thought  in  his  own  incisive  way  :  "  Had  this 
Devil  been  consulted  by  the  Almighty  when  He 
laid  the  plan  of  man's  final  destiny,  I  cannot  con- 
ceive him  capable  of  inventing  one  more  eligible  to 
his  infernal  disposition  than  this  I  am  now  disput- 
ing."     (p.  71.)     Still  again  he  thrusts  the  terrible 

16 


THE   GOSPEL   RENAISSANCE 

dilemma  upon  his  reader :  "  We  are  told  of  a  God 
who  acts  for  his  own  benefit  abstractly  from  his 
creation ;  and  that  in  millions  of  cases  he  finds  it 
most  to  his  glory  to  make  his  rational,  hoping,  want- 
ing creatures  miserable ;  and  this  is  called  goodness. 
We  are  likewise  told  of  a  devil,  who  acts  for  his 
own  gratification  and  who  delights  in  making  God*s 
creatures  miserable,  and  this  is  called  badness.  But 
for  my  part,  according  to  such  statements  the  differ- 
ence between  goodness  and  badness  is  so  small  I 
can  hardly  distinguish  it.  It  is  profane,  in  my 
opinion,  to  attribute  a  disposition  to  the  Almighty 
which  we  can  justly  condemn  in  ourselves."  (p.  82.) 
Have  we  not  heard  that  sentiment  put  in  almost 
the  same  phrase,  in  a  modern  poet's  familiar  verse  ? 

*'  Not  mine  to  look  where  cherubim 
And  seraphs  may  not  see. 
But  nothing  can  be  good  in  Him 
Which  evil  is  in  me ! " 

When  John  Greenleaf  Whittier  wrote  those 
noble  lines,  I,  for  one,  believe  that  the  spirit  of 
Hosea  Ballou  held  the  torch  which  illumined  his 
understanding,  and  almost  breathed  the  words  into 
his  ear. 

It  will  be  seen  that  Hosea  Ballou  was  not  a  man 
of  "one  idea.*'  It  is  not  true  that  he  was  chiefly 
devoted  to  his  views  on  future  (or  no-future)  pun- 
ishment. That  was  a  matter  whose  prominence  hel 
deprecated.  It  constituted  but  a  secondary  matter! 
in  his  theology.  It  was  a  point  much  misrepre-^ 
sented.  Ballou's  contention  was  twofold  :  first,  than 
punishment  is  contemporaneous  with  sin,  begins\ 
with  it,  continues  to  accompany  it;  second,  that  the 
changes  in  environment  and  condition  at  death  will 

17 


HOSEA    BALLOU 

so  influence  the  soul  as  to  overcome  its  revolt  and 
rebelliousness  and  bring  it  into  a  quick  penitence. 
He  would  never  admit  that  he  held  death  to  be  the 
savior  of  man ;  and  he  resented  the  imputation  that 
he  taught,  as  Channing  charged,  that  death  has 
power  to  change  and  purify  the  soul.  He  claimed 
that  the  only  difference  between  himself  and  other 
believers  in  the  ultimate  holiness  of  man,  was  a  dif- 
ference as  to  the  intensity  of  the  means  of  grace  and 
the  speed  with  which  they  would  operate. 

But  the  prominence  given  to  Ballou's  views  on 
future  punishment  is  out  of  all  proportion  to  its 
relative  importance  in  his  thought.  As  he  con- 
ceived it,  the  essential  matter  in  regard  to  punish- 
ment was  not  its  duration,  but  its  certainty  and  its 
adequacy.  It  was  not  so  important  to  him  that 
men  were  saved  at  death,  as  that  they  were  disci- 
plined in  life.  His  main  contention  was  not  the 
one  which  linked  death  and  glory,  but  one  which 
bound  together  life  and  judgment.  He  made  a 
life-long  fight  to  impress  the  truth  that  "  the  right- 
eous shall  be  recompensed  in  the  earth,  much  more 
the  wicked  and  the  sinner.*'  But  the  spiritual  fact 
which  was  vital  to  his  teaching  is  not  expressed  in 
the  adverbial  clause  of  time  and  place, —  "in  the 
earth,"  —  but  in  the  impressive  predicate,  —  "  shall 
be  recompensed  !  "  Very  properly  does  Dr.  Brooks 
credit  Ballou  with  putting  into  the  thought  of  the 
world  "  this  vital  fact  concerning  the  instant  and 
constant  operation  of  God's  moral  government." 
No  phrase  ever  framed  could  have  crowded  into 
a  few  words  so  complete  a  statement  of  Ballou's 
teachings  concerning  punishment  as  is  contained  in 
the     new    affirmation     of    Universalist    principles, 

i8 


THE    GOSPEL   RENAISSANCE 

"  The  certainty  of  a  just  retribution  for  sin." 
That  was  the  heart  and  soul  of  his  doctrine.  He 
brought  the  period  of  the  operation  of  God's  judg- 
ments against  sin  forward  from  eternity  into  time. 
He  impressed  on  men  that  punishment  is  not  de- 
layed till  some  remote  judgment-day,  because  every 
day  is  judgment-day,  and  the  great  assize  has 
begun.  And  I  venture  to  say  that  more  dissent 
and  opposition  was  provoked  by  this  teaching, 
which  is  hardly  disputed  to-day,  than  by  his  pecu- 
liar views  as  to  repentance  at  death. 

That  incident  of  his  teaching  was  no  essential 
part  of  the  system  he  outlined,  and  in  time  dropped 
away  from  it.  He  had  stated  a  truth  whose  riper 
development  was  to  refute  his  own  application  of  it 
to  this  life  and  the  next.  The  doctrine  that  sin 
involves,  entails,  and  produces  retributive  processes, 
leads  finally  to  the  conclusion  that  those  processes 
may  not  work  themselves  entirely  to  a  finish  in  this 
life.  But  that  is  only  a  detail  of  the  greater 
thought  which  Ballou  grasped  and  enforced  with 
singular  power,  that  here  or  hereafter,  in  any  envi- 
ronment or  condition,  salvation  is  secured  only  by 
and  through  the  processes  of  unfolding  character. 
And  it  was  at  this  very  point  in  his  teaching  that 
he  was  most  bitterly  attacked  and  resisted.  The 
odium  which  Ballou  encountered  was  by  no  means 
chiefly  because  he  taught  no  future  punishment,  but 
because  he  taught  the  certainty  of  punishment  on 
earth.  To  the  Orthodoxy  of  his  day  it  was  abhor- \ 
rent  to  hold  that  God  was  judging  sinners  in  this 
world.  In  that  theology  all  punishment  was  post- 
poned, all  judgment  post-mortem.  If  this  seems 
incredible  to  a  generation  which  is  everywhere  dif- 

19 


HOSEA   BALLOU 

ferently  taught,  it  is  because  Hosea  Ballou  wrought 
such  a  vigorous  work,  lived  such  a  strenuous  life. 

It  ought  now  to  be  clear  that  Ballou's  thought 
was  not  narrowed  to  a  mere  affirmation  of  the  sal- 
vation of  all  souls.  It  was  a  rounded  and  symmet- 
rical body  of  doctrine  in  which  the  whole  emphasis 
of  interpretation  was  shifted  from  Law  to  Love ; 
from  Vindictiveness  to  DiscipHne ;  from  Fear  to 
Faith ;  from  Sovereignty  to  Fatherhood.  It 
affirmed  as  the  true  keynote  of  God's  providence 
in  the  spiritual  realm,  not  evil  but  good,  not  retri- 
bution but  discipline,  not  damnation  but  salvation. 
It  was  a  genuine  revival  of  the  real  good  news  of 
Jesus  Christ,  a  true  evangel,  gladdening  the  whole 
world  of  theological  thought. 

I  do  not  think  I  undervalue  the  significance  of 
John  Murray's  work,  its  courageousness,  its  dy- 
namic force,  its  initial  vitality.  But  his  thought,  as 
compared  with  Ballou's,  was  as  March  with  its 
herald  hepatica  compared  with  the  flower-bloom  of 
May.  Universalism  never  could  have  lived  far 
into  the  nineteenth  century,  resting  upon  the 
grounds  upon  which  Murray  placed  it.  It  was  a 
proper  conclusion  without  adequate  premises.  It 
was  a  real  truth  deduced  from  imaginary  facts.  In 
briefest  terms,  it  was  the  old  Calvinism  over  again, 
with  this  difference :  Murray  held  that  since  Christ 
died  for  all  a  price  of  ransom  has  been  paid  for  all, 
and  all  are  therefore  redeemed.  In  his  thought, 
the  absolute  terms  of  the  spiritual  transaction 
between  the  Father  and  Son  inures  to  the  good  of 
the  human  race ;  and  since  Christ  has  paid  for  all, 
God  must  deliver  all. 

One  emerges  from  this  strained  argument  and 
20 


THE   GOSPEL   RENAISSANCE 

fantastic    logic    into    Bailouts     calm,    perspicuous 
thought,  as  from  a  Dutch  garden,  with  its  clipped 
and  artificial  forms,  into  a  lovely  landscape :  in  the 
one  everything  is  distorted  to  suit  a  preconceived 
pattern ;  in  the  other  the  forms  of  tree  and  shrub 
follow   the   gracious    lines    of    nature.       Murray's 
theology  adopts  all  the  impossibilities  of  Calvinism. 
Ballou  rejects   them  all  for  the  simple  Gospel   of 
Jesus  Christ.     He  outran  Murray  in  his  compre- 
hension of  the  plan  and  providence  of  God,  as  Paul 
outran  the  apostles  at  Jerusalem  in  perceiving  the 
mission  of  the  Gospel.     In  the  essentials  of  theol- 
ogy   he    out-thought   Jonathan    Edwards,  who   is 
counted  the  foremost  of  American  theologians,  as 
Abraham  Lincoln  out-thought  John  C.  Calhoun  in 
the    philosophy    of  the    Union.      He    out-trusted 
Channing  in  the  sublime  faith  in  the  Fatherhood 
which    both    proclaimed,  as  Charles    Sumner   out- 
trusted  Rufus  Choate  in  his  faith  in  democracy  and 
liberty.     Beecher   is    counted  the  great  apostle  of 
the  doctrine  of  the  certainty  of  love  in  the  Divine 
Plan.     But  Henry  Ward  Beecher  would  have  been 
as  impossible  without  the  pioneering  of  Ballou  as 
Lincoln  would  have  been  impossible  without  Wash- 
ington.      Horace    Bushnell    helped    thousands    of 
evangelical    believers    to   a    rational  theory  of  the 
atonement.     But  Horace   Bushnell   only  put  into 
Orthodox  minds  a  thought  they  had  already  rejected 
when  it   came  from    the  lips  of  the    arch-heretic, 
Hosea  Ballou.     Phillips  Brooks    did  a  great   and 
noble  spiritual  work  with  the  Christian  believers  of 
America.     But  Phillips  Brooks's  work  was  possible 
only  because  of  a  sentiment  prepared  to  receive  his 
word  by  the  toil  of  Ballou  and  his  fellows. 

21 


HOSEA    BALLOU 

By  and  by,  when  there  shall  be  an  unprejudiced 
study  of  the  sources  of  American  religious  thought 
in  the  nineteenth  century,  Ballou's  name  will  be 
brought  forward  into  the  light  and  he  will  be 
recognized  as  the  one  clear,  courageous,  and  wholly 
consistent  thinker  of  his  time,  —  the  great  fore- 
runner of  the  faith  of  the  twentieth  century.  He 
was  the  first  in  point  of  time.  He  was  foremost  in 
the  scope  of  his  thought.  It  may  seem  audacious 
to  claim  so  much  for  one  whom  the  religious  world 
so  largely  ignores.  But  the  fact  remains  that  his 
interpretation  of  the  Gospel  is  that  which  is  fast 
taking  possession  of  men's  minds  as  the  real  and 
permanent  truth  about  it.  If  it  be  the  truth  about 
that  Gospel  then  it  is  a  deeper  and  broader  and  a 
higher  thought  about  it  than  any  which  has  been 
entertained.  And  if  it  be  the  deepest  thought 
about  the  Gospel  which  has  come  out  of  the  reli- 
gious Hfe  of  America,  then  the  man  who  first  gave 
it  in  its  symmetry  and  its  fullness  to  the  American 
world  is  the  profoundest,  the  clearest  and  the  great- 
est of  American  religious  thinkers.  The  logic  of 
events  demonstrates  it. 

If  it  be  deemed  singular  that  there  should  be  so 
slender  a  recognition  and  so  small  credit  given  to 
one  who  sounded  the  great  advance  in  the  theology 
of  his  century,  it  must  be  remembered  that  preju- 
dice and  ignorance  have  in  his  case  wrought  their 
perfect  work.  To  the  majority  of  those  who  have 
written  the  religious  history  of  America  he  was  a 
heretic.  And  too  many  of  those  who  have  inherited 
his  teachings  have  never  taken  the  pains  to  seek  for 
their  origin.  It  takes  time  for  the  world  to  recog- 
nize its   prophets.     Ballou    is    not   the   first   great 

22 


THE    GOSPEL   RENAISSANCE 

leader  whose  fame  has  lingered  and  whose  services 
have  been  ignored,  while  others  received  the  credit 
of  the  things  he  wrought.  For  three  hundred  years 
the  fame  of  the  greatest  of  Englishmen,  the  vindi- 
cator of  democracy  in  Great  Britain,  the  destroyer 
of  monarchical  power  in  England,  has  suffered 
eclipse  behind  the  names  of  small  statesmen  and 
smaller  kings,  and  it  is  only  to-day  that  Oliver 
Cromwell  is  coming  into  his  rights,  and  inheriting 
the  honor  which  belongs  to  him  as  great  general, 
great  statesman,  great  liberator.  While  so  strange 
a  paradox  as  this  is  fresh  in  the  mind  of  the  student 
of  history,  there  need  be  no  surprise  that  Hosea 
Ballou  still  awaits  his  proper  honors. 

When  the  Universalist  Church  re-wrote  its  fun- 
damental principles,  it  did  two  notable  things.  In 
the  first  place  it  wrote  down  what  is  unquestionably 
the  "  coming  creed  "  of  Christendom.  More  and 
more  we  perceive  in  the  talk  of  the  people,  the 
drift  of  the  bright  books,  the  trend  of  social  reform, 
what  are  to  be  the  cardinal  doctrines  of  the  Twen- 
tieth Century  Christian.  First  and  foremost  stands 
the  Fatherhood  of  God  as  a  relation  true  for 
all  men,  of  all  conditions,  for  all  eternity.  You 
can  no  more  keep  that  word  "  Father  "  from  the 
lips  of  mankind,  than  you  can  keep  the  morning 
sun  from  the  mountain  tops,  the  broad  vales,  the 
hollows  of  the  sea.  The  historical  and  scientific 
spirit  of  the  age  has  completely  undone  the  old 
theology  of  the  Trinity,  and  the  whole  energy  of 
the  Trinitarian  is  now  devoted  to  the  effort  to  con- 
ceal his  actual  Unitarianism  by  stretching  and  strain- 
ing the  old  phrases.  And  the  only  Atonement 
which  men  are  recognizing  in  Christ's  work  to-day, 

23 


HOSEA   BALLOU 

is  that  which  brings  man  to  his  Father^s  side 
through  a  following  of  this  spiritual  leader.  Our 
doctrine  about  the  Bible  is  a  statement  of  the  spirit 
in  which  all  Christian  men  are  going  to  the  Scrip- 
tures. No  ethical  teacher  would  now  affront  the 
moral  intelligence  of  men  by  denying  the  certainty 
of  a  just  Retribution  for  sin.  And  if  one  may  trust 
the  private  advices  which  are  everywhere  thrust  upon 
us,  as  well  as  the  public  confession  of  accredited 
teachers,  the  belief  in  the  Final  Salvation  of  all  souls 
is  a  heresy  of  such  alarming  proportions  that  it  will 
soon  become  the  universal  orthodoxy.  So  that  no 
recent  expression  of  theological  faith  condenses  so 
much  of  the  current  conviction  of  men,  as  the  five 
principles  of  Universalism. 

But,  in  the  second  place,  when  we  framed  that 
statement,  we  were  translating  the  theology  of 
Hosea  Ballou  out  of  the  quaint  phrase  of  the 
"  Treatise  on  Atonement  "  into  the  speech  of  our 
day.  If  the  distinguished  Convention  which 
adopted  that  document  had  deliberated  with  Bailouts 
little  volume  open  before  them,  they  could  not 
more  successfully  have  embodied  the  spirit  of  his 
teachings.  Their  action  showed  the  power  of  his 
work,  and  its  vitality  after  a  hundred  years  of  test 
and  trial.  It  was  the  distinct  assertion  of  Ballou's 
theology.  It  was  his  vindication  as  thinker  and  as 
prophet. 

Again  let  it  be  reiterated,  that  the  Universalism 
of  Ballou,  like  that  of  the  Church  his  thought  has 
dominated,  was  not  and  is  not,  as  one  of  his  critics 
has  called  it,  "  a  special  issue "  taken  against  the 
doctrine  of  eternal  punishment.  It  is  a  lucid,  a 
coherent  and  a  rational  theological  system.  All  its 
/  24 


THE   GOSPEL   RENAISSANCE 

great  doctrines  have  one  after  another  come  into 
large  acceptance  among  progressive  Christian 
thinkers,  save  only  the  one  great  conclusion  which 
logically  completes  and  justifies  the  rest.  And  to 
this  few  objections  are  any  longer  urged  to  which 
reasoning  men  attend  or  need  to  attend.  There 
still  persists  the  fear  which  Dr.  Abbott  entertains, 
that  some  wills  may  elect  evil  forever.  But  this  is 
an  apprehension  which  a  clearer  psychology  will 
remove.  For  the  will  is  not  a  thing  in  the  air,  a 
capricious  or  indeterminable  force,  without  law  and 
without  reason.  Will  is  not  an  entity  out  of  all  re- 
lations. It  is  not  a  faculty,  but  a  process.  It  is 
self-acting  only  in  the  sense  that  it  is  Self  acting. 
Will  does  not  control  self;  self  controls  will.  All 
the  self  goes  into  every  act  of  will,  so  that  whatever 
enlightens  the  intellect,  or  touches  the  affections, 
enlightens  or  moves  the  will.  Every  conversion 
proves  the  will  to  be  accessible.  The  whole  prob- 
lem of  the  salvation  of  all  souls  is  involved  in  the 
salvation  of  any  soul.  If  any  will  can  be  persuaded, 
all  can  be.  If  God  can  save  Dr.  Abbott,  he  can 
save  anybody ;  not  because  Dr.  Abbott  is  a  sinner 
above  other  sinners,  but  because  he  is  one  of  us, 
involving  in  his  own  nature  all  men's  characteristics. 
So  as  psychology  sheds  its  light  on  that  problem, 
the  difficulty  will  fade  away. 

There  remains  the  suggestion  that  annihilation 
may  intervene  to  balk  the  good  will  of  God,  and 
sinners  may  exhaust  their  vitality  and  perish  of 
moral  paresis.  They  may  not  have  enough  moral 
momentum  in  this  life  to  carry  them  beyond  its 
confines.  But  nobody  has  ever  shown  that  person- 
ality or  self-consciousness,  which  is  its  essence,  is 

25 


HOSEA   BALLOU 

one  whit  abated  by  inveterate  sin.  And  as  for  the 
new  doctrine  of  "  immortability,"  men  will  believe 
that  only  when  they  believe  that  each  new-born 
babe  is  in  peril  of  losing  its  immortality  unless  it 
can  attain  a  certain  minimum  of  moral  vitality. 

With  such  frail  barriers,  and  no  more,  to  hold 
back  the  grand  conclusions  of  Ballou  and  the 
Church  he  indoctrinated,  how  long  will  it  be  ere 
the  waters  break  through  and  flood  the  thirsting 
souls  of  men  !  No  wonder  that  the  keenest  minds 
in  other  Churches  are  perceiving  the  inevitable  and 
preparing  themselves  for  it.  Says  Dr.  Gordon  in 
his  paper  on  Jonathan  Edwards,  "  If  the  plan  of 
salvation  included  only  a  part  of  mankind,  the  God 
of  Absolute  Love  must  be  surrendered;  if  the  God 
of  Absolute  Love  is  at  the  head  of  the  universe, 
the  plan  of  salvation  inclusive  of  only  a  part  of 
mankind  must  be  abandoned."  How  long  can 
rational  men  halt  at  that  dilemma?  Suppose  we 
say,  "  If  two  and  two  do  not  make  four,  our  science 
of  numbers  must  be  surrendered ;  if  our  science 
of  numbers  is  true,  the  theory  that  two  and  two 
do  not  make  four  must  be  abandoned."  How  long 
shall  we  hesitate  and  say,  "  Nevertheless,  we  are 
not  to  be  reckoned  behevers  in  the  arithmetic  !  " 

In  contrast  with  such  logical  helplessness,  how 
striking  is  the  firm  and  vigorous  thought  of  Ballou, 
whose  simple  faith  could  not  hesitate  for  a  moment 
as  to  the  sanity  and  straightforwardness  of  the 
universe,  but  moved  right  on  to  a  rational  and  lov- 
ing solution  of  the  great  problems  of  the  soul. 
There  is  no  finer  figure  in  all  theological  history 
than  his,  as  so  many  of  us  have  seen  him  in  that 
historic  picture  which  presents  him  with  the  open 

26 


THE    GOSPEL   RENAISSANCE 

Bible  by  his  side,  and  the  light  of  truth  in  his  eyes, 
the  type  of  fearless  faith,  of  unswerving  trust  in  the 
love  of  God  and  the  reasonableness  of  his  world. 
Brave  spokesman  of  the  truth,  he  stumbled  not  at 
the  logic  of  faith,  but  faced  the  conclusions  to  which 
his  premises  led  on,  like  the  strong  believer  that  he 
was. 

He  dared  deny  !  But  faith  was  in  his  doubt  ! 
As  when  the  pilot  puts  his  ship  about. 
Rejecting  the  false  lights  upon  his  lee. 
And  trusts  the  mystery  of  the  open  sea. 

It  is  to  the  championship  of  these  great  spiritual 
ideas  that  this  dear  Church  of  ours  is  called  and  is 
committed.  The  whole  Christian  world  is  aglow 
with  the  spirit  of  this  faith.  Even  in  its  most  inert 
and  sluggish  bodies,  the  thrill  of  the  new  life  is  felt. 
The  battle  of  a  century  is  not  yet  won,  but  the  new 
ideas  will  never  go  out  in  eclipse  any  more.  The 
old  Gospel  has  been  born  again  in  its  graciousness, 
its  breadth  and  its  sublimity.  We  can  see  to-day 
the  great  ideas  which  are  to  control  the  moral  life 
of  the  new  hundred  years.  They  are  the  most 
Christian  which  the  Church  has  ever  held.  They 
are  as  necessary  to  the  welfare,  aye,  to  the  salvation 
of  the  world  as  Paul's  doctrine  of  a  universal  gospel 
in  his  age,  or  Luther's  teaching  of  the  soul's  respon- 
sibility to  God  in  his.  The  world  is  always  being 
saved  by  its  theology.  Its  future  will  be  shaped  as 
its  past  has  been  by  the  creed  of  its  inmost  heart, 
which  will  in  some  form  embody  the  faith  for  which 
our  Church  has  striven  these  hundred  years  and 
more. 

Why,  then,  should  we  hesitate  or  halt  when  we 
see    the   great    multitude    of  America's    Christians 

27 


HOSEA   BALLOU 

wheeling  into  column  to  follow  Hosea  Ballou,  and 
taking  step  with  his  advancing  thought  ?  Why 
should  we  be  abashed  to  silence  when  we  hear  the 
message  of  Ballou  reverberating  in  the  mighty  tones 
of  the  other  three  great  "  Bs"  of  American  theol- 
ogy, —  Beecher  and  Bushnell  and  Brooks  ?  When 
our  elder  brothers  of  the  larger  churches  suggest 
there  is  no  occasion  for  us  to  speak,  and  tell  us  that 
little  churches  "  should  be  seen  and  not  heard,"  why 
do  we  not  rejoin  with  that  famous  Scripture,  "If 
these  should  hold  their  peace,  the  very  stones  of  the 
earth  would  cry  out."  It  is  not  for  pride  and  for 
self-gratulation  that  we  rehearse  these  historic  facts 
to  ourselves.  It  is  that  we  may  think  soberly  upon 
the  tremendous  responsibilities  they  lay  upon  us, 
the  solemn  trusts  of  privilege. 

The  nineteenth  century  has  vindicated  the  in- 
sight of  Ballou  in  the  way  he  marked  out  for  our 
feet.  Will  the  new  one  vindicate  our  courage  and 
faithfulness  in  walking  therein  ?  His  leadership  in 
thought  put  this  Church  in  the  van  of  the  marching 
columns.  Will  our  discipleship  keep  us  there  ? 
The  stern  years  will  tell.  Let  us  gird  up  our  loins 
like  men,  and  challenge  ourselves  in  the  spirit  of 
Kipling's  lines,  but  two  words  changed : 

"Take  up  the  Christian's  burden  — 

Ye  dare  not  stoop  to  less  — 
Nor  call  too  loud  on  freedom 

To  cloke  your  weariness  ; 
By  all  ye  will  or  whisper. 

By  all  ye  learn  or  do. 
The  silent,   waiting  people 

Shall  weigh  your  God  and  you/' 


"irinivereaUet  Boofte 


Applied  Evolution.  Marion  D.  Shutter,  D.D.  ^i.oo 
Babylon    and    Nineveh   through  American 

Eyes.     S.  H.  M'Colester,  D.D.  .75 

Ballou,    Hosea  — A  Marvellous  Life  Story. 

O.  F.  Safford,  D.D.  i.cxj 

Christus     Victor  — A    Student's    Reverie. 

Henry  N.  Dodge.  i.oo 

Leisure  of  God.  John  Coleman  Adams,  D.D.  i.oo 
Manuals  of  Faith  and  Duty,    n  vols.    25 

cents  each.     The  set,  net,  2.00 

Over  the  River  —  A  Book  of  Consolation .    T . 

B.  Thayer,  D.D.     Net,  .75 

Purpose  of  God.  J.  Smith  Dodge,  D.D.  Net,  .75 
Theology  of  Universalism.     T.  B.  Thayer, 

D.D.  I.oo 

Universalism  in  America.     2  vols.     Richard 

Eddy  D.D.  3-oo 

Universalism  the  prevailing  doctrine  of  the 

Christian  Church  during  its  first  Five 

Hundred  Years.      J.    W.    Hanson,  D.D. 

Net,  I.oo 

*Clnivcc6ali0t  iPubUsbing  Mouse 

BOSTON CHICAGO 


.p^ 


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